Only a Phone Call Away
by TheGirlWhoRemembers
Summary: Communication is the key to any relationship, and the truth will out. Always. Episode tag to 2.22, UFO and Area 51.


AN: Thoughts on the ep at the end of this (spoiler-heavy) one-shot. There are also spoilers for the preview/promo of the season finale if you haven't seen that/are avoiding it.

* * *

 **MATTY'S RESIDENCE**

 **SOMEWHERE IN LA**

* * *

Matty walked in through her front door, and stared at the painting on the wall.

That very specific painting.

She swallowed and turned away, heading to her living room and pouring herself a generous glass of her best whiskey.

(She _really_ needed a stiff drink.)

Matty sat down in her favourite armchair, and let her shoulders droop, let herself bring her hand up to her temple.

It was hard, having to keep track of the big picture. The greater good. To have no choice but to keep secrets from her loved ones, her family.

To have no choice but to, sometimes, move them around like chess pieces on the board.

(She pushed that thought away. The thought of _her_ agents, her _family_ being _pawns_ left a terrible, horrible, sickening taste in her mouth.)

Matty took another sip of her whiskey. Then another. Then another.

And then, in the privacy of her own home, completely free of any bugs, of any cameras of any sort, she allowed herself a small, sardonic, slightly-sad smirk.

She knew Riley would have taken _full advantage_ of her bumped-up security clearance.

(Jack had been right; she might know everything, but she wasn't right about everything. At least not all the time.)

(Riley's mind was a loaded gun. Brilliant, dangerous and always poised to act.)

(But at the same time, it wasn't. It wasn't just a ready weapon, a tool to be used by anyone.)

(The young hacker did not need Matty to point her brain at the right targets.)

(Riley could do that just fine.)

(She wasn't always lawful, and she hadn't always been just, but Riley had her own code of ethics and morals, a code that'd developed more and more over the last few years, and become more and more tightly-held by the young woman.)

And she knew exactly what Riley would have done.

And what Bozer and Jack would have done once they'd been told.

She even knew what Mac would do after.

And she could already see the fallout.

(Baby Einstein was far, far too curious for his own good.)

(She'd done everything she could to protect him…but maybe, just maybe, her protection was doing more harm than good.)

(Whether it was or not…well, that was a moot point.)

(As much as he said he wanted to move on, as much as he tried, she knew Mac would never, ever stop being curious, never, ever be able to stop that little voice in his head that kept asking _why?_ )

(It was his second-greatest strength…and his second-greatest weakness.)

The truth would out.

The fallout was nuclear.

But, Matty thought to herself, with a very dark-humoured little smile, borrowing a leaf from Jack's book (which Mac and Riley and Bozer had already borrowed for their own), if anyone could survive a nuclear fallout…it was Mac.

* * *

 **MACGYVER'S RESIDENCE**

 **LA**

* * *

At 3:45 AM, Mac sat at his desk in his pyjamas, having given up on sleep two hours previous.

He turned the USB over in his hands, over and over again, staring at it, as if he could somehow divine the answer to his question from the plastic casing.

 _To look, or not to look?_

(The USB didn't answer, unsurprisingly.)

Mac sighed and ran his right hand through his hair.

* * *

 _My dad has known where to find me all this time._

 _He has to have._

 _It's not as if I was the one who suddenly disappeared off the face of the Earth and changed my address about eighty times in the last seventeen years._

 _He broke into my house to leave me a cryptic Christmas present, but he didn't even leave a note. Not even a generic Christmas card._

 _He could easily just have picked up the phone and made a single phone call._

 _E. T. worked it out, and my dad's IQ is higher than Einstein's. He could have built a phone in, by my estimate, at least sixteen different ways to call me, for God's sake!_

 _But he didn't._

 _And yeah, why waste my time and energy, both of which are finite resources, searching for someone who apparently doesn't want to be found?_

* * *

Mac turned the USB over in his hands again.

* * *

 _On the other hand…I can think of several reasons why my dad couldn't just pick up the phone and call me._

 _Reasons why he might have had to resort to puzzles and riddles that I still can't work out._

 _Reasons that make an awful lot of sense considering that Matty was A, investigating my dad, and B, has been hiding secrets about him, lying about him, for months._

* * *

Mac huffed out a breath and closed his eyes for a long moment.

* * *

 _At the door, Riley reached out and put a hand on his shoulder for a moment._

' _Whatever you decide, Mac, we support you.'_

 _Jack put both hands on his shoulders, then, after a moment, just pulled him into a hug._

' _We got your six, son. I got your six. Always.'_

 _Mac just swallowed and nodded, not quite able to find the words to thank them, but from the looks in their eyes and the tiny little smiles on their faces, they got the message loud and clear anyway._

 _Mac closed the door behind Jack and Riley and headed back towards the kitchen, intending to grab himself a glass of water, only to have Bozer press a mug of his special, top-secret-recipe hot chocolate into his hands._

' _BFFs stick with each other, and we're BFFs forever, bro. Don't forget that.'_

 _Mac took a sip of the delicious-as-always hot chocolate, and pulled his roommate into a side-hug with a soft little smile._

' _That's a tautology, Boze.' Bozer shot him a_ look _that was equal parts fondness and exasperation for a moment, before it shifted into something even softer with plenty more worry in it. Mac gave a little head-shake and took another, larger sip of hot chocolate, raising the mug to his best friend. 'Thanks, Boze.'_

 _It wasn't just for the hot chocolate, and Bozer got that message loud and clear._

* * *

Mac opened his eyes, and reached out to grab his laptop. He plugged in the USB, and opened the only file loaded on it.

He began to read.

His eyes widened.

* * *

AN: Dun, dun, dun! Yeah, I know I didn't offer up much of a theory as to exactly what's going on, but we'll find out next week, so...

Hopefully, you guys like what I did with Matty – I don't buy that she has no idea that Riley would use her newly upgraded security clearance, Matty knows everything. Clearly, she is not allowed to tell Jack (or anyone else) what she knows about Mac's dad. However, she has to know that they are sure that she does know something, and she has to know that Riley would sneak a peek at that file…Matty does everything for a reason, and she does act for the good of her family (even if she is sometimes wrong – see Riley's-brain-is-a-loaded-gun or taking away Mac's paperclips). I think that she is trying to protect Mac from something and has kept the secrets relating to his dad for that reason, but she now sees that it is futile and probably doing more harm than good, and perhaps also circumstances have changed/this is the first opportunity she's had to leak the file to them.

Thoughts on the ep: I loved it! Mac and Riley's adventure, winning over Dr Hermann (cheesy as hell, been the plot of so many episodes, but still so very _MacGyver,_ so no complaints here!), Jack's conspiracy theory and movie references and how everyone knew that Jack would be so upset at missing this mission! That scene with Jack and Matty was also really good in my opinion, both of them were sympathetic and clearly had good reasons to do what they did. I am glad that they're not going with villain!Matty (at least, it really seems that they aren't…)

Speculation as to exactly what is going down with Mac's dad/the finale (SPOILERS FOR THE PROMOS HERE):

I have four hypotheses as to the identity of Mac's dad.

1\. Mac's dad is Oversight. I actually think this is quite unlikely – I think it's way too obvious, and it doesn't actually make a huge amount of sense. I mean, if Mac's dad is Oversight, why does Matty feel that she has to keep that a secret to _protect Mac_? (I can understand why she'd have to do that for national security reasons, but she made it very clear that it was about protecting Mac to Jack and I believe her.) The only reason that I can think of for that is that Oversight (as has been sort-of hinted occasionally) is extremely sinister, and while on the side of the good guys, is definitely not a good guy himself. (See my interpretation in The Asset in _Two Paperclips and a Stick of Gum_ for what I mean…which becomes really disturbing if Oversight is indeed Mac's dad…)

2\. Mac's dad is/was a bad guy. Either Mac's father was a bad guy who reformed when he met and fell in love with Mac's mom (who was then killed by his former associates – which means Mac was kinda right with his very last words to his dad), or he never quite reformed and was still sorta bad. (I actually had a theory for a while – and still kind of do – that Mac's dad is The Ghost…he did, after all, attempt to kill both of Mac's surrogate father-figures, and conveniently, Mac's dad broke into his house hours before The Ghost did and wired the whole thing to blow…another theory I had was that Mac's dad is the head of The Organization…). I think this is actually quite sensible, given that Matty (and presumably Oversight if this is right) was investigating him, he mysteriously disappeared, and that Matty is attempting to protect Mac – it would hurt him so much to find out that his dad (whom he really did seem to idolize as a kid) was a bad guy! A potential sub-class of this theory is that Mac's dad is an unwilling bad guy, and he's reaching out to his son to help him get out of what he's trapped in in the only way that he can.

3\. Mac's dad was a secret agent who was partnered with Oversight and is actually deceased. That is, Oversight was friends with Mac's dad, probably very good friends. It is Oversight who has been leaving these hints/clues for Mac, acting out some kind of last wish of his friend. Matty is protecting Mac from the (probably extremely tragic) truth about what happened to his father, and protecting Mac from his father's enemies (who are, of course, still out there and still a danger).

4\. Mac's dad was recruited by the CIA/some other covert agency because of his skill-set (which he shares with his son). He was being investigated in 2000 because they wanted to recruit him, and he had to leave Mac because of that recruitment (which might not have been entirely voluntary/free of coercion/manipulation). Oversight was the guy who recruited him (and is probably sinister in some way). Mac's dad is reaching out in the best/only way he can.

(3 and 4 can kind of be fused/mix-and-matched, I guess.)


End file.
